Peter Daou has a great essay on the intersection of blogging and politics, including how he thinks they can be the most effective. I would replace bloggers, though, with activists and reach the same conclusion. The issue is rigor in chasing down leads and stories and the mainstream media is slowly eroding their own capabilities for investigation. Or, at least they’re focusing on different types of investigations (“Is your house full of deadly ant droppings? Find out next!”)… Activists have always fought to raise attention to their issues, so Daou’s model isn’t that new.

Blogging is, of course, a different type of activism and therein lies the newness. Daou lays out a good model to start from, but I’m waiting for someone to explain/identify/build the next step in this model, maximizing the effectiveness of bloggers. How do you take a blogging meme and push it into the regular media? How do Republican blogger/activists do this well now?

(found via Atrios)